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The first openly gay member of Congress said Sunday it was a mistake for President-elect Obama to invite the Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration ceremony. "Mr. Warren compared same-sex couples to incest. I found that deeply offensive and unfair," Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said in a broadcast interview. Warren, a best-selling author and leader of a Southern California megachurch, is a popular evangelical who came under fire after Obama's announcement because of his support for California's Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage.

Rev. James L. Bevel, a fiery top lieutenant of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and a force behind civil rights campaigns of the 1960s whose erratic behavior and conviction on incest charges tarnished his legacy, died Friday in Virginia of pancreatic cancer. He was 72. Sherrilynn Bevel, a daughter, said he died at her home in Springfield, Va. She said Rev. Bevel, who was freed on bond because of ill health, had been there since Nov. 8. "Jim Bevel was Martin Luther King's most influential aide," said civil rights historian David Garrow.

An Arizona judge dropped four of eight charges against Warren Jeffs, even as authorities looked into whether the polygamist sect leader had relationships with four girls at a Texas ranch. A Mohave County Superior Court judge found that a state incest law does not apply to the arranged marriages of two teen girls and their older male relatives. ---------- Page compiled from Tribune news services

A jury convicted a civil rights figure of incest Thursday after concluding that he had sex with his teenage daughter 15 years ago. Rev. James Bevel, 71, a top lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr. who also helped organize the Million Man March, faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced. The four-day trial in Loudoun County Circuit Court included bizarre testimony about Bevel's philosophies for eradicating lust, and parents' duty to "sexually orient" their children.

A daughter of a civil rights icon who served as a top lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr. testified Monday that her father regularly molested her beginning when she was 6 years old. Rev. James Bevel pleaded not guilty to a charge of incest before jury selection began Monday. Prosecutors have said he had sex with a teenage daughter years ago and told her the sex was part of religious training. The daughter testified she grew up in a communal lifestyle in which she regularly saw her father having sex with women and she came to perceive her own molestation as normal.

It began quietly enough. Best-selling author Wally Lamb edited a collection of essays written by the female inmates in the writing workshop he leads at the York Correctional Institution, the state's only women's prison in Niantic. But the publication of that 2003 book, "Couldn't Keep It to Myself," quickly unleashed a storm of controversy. The Department of Correction sued those inmate writers for the cost of their incarceration and temporarily shut down the writing program. Ultimately, the lawsuit was settled, and the writing program was reinstated.

Jane Marie Ford, died Aug. 11, 2007 in Spirit Lake, IA. She was born Jane Williams in Chicago on April 4, 1921. She held a Bachelor's Degree from Mundelein College, a Master's Degree from Drake University, and a Ph.D. in English Literature and Psychoanalytic Psychology from SUNY Buffalo (1975). Jane lived in San Diego, CA from 1976 to 2007, working at Harcourt Brace, Academic Press and the University of California at San Diego where she had a Visiting Scholar Appointment from 1991-1997.

Thousands of Poles took to Warsaw's streets Wednesday to demand a complete ban on abortion, including in cases of rape or incest. Two separate marches merged into a demonstration of 4,000 people in front of parliament, where lawmakers were debating amending the constitution to tighten Poland's anti-abortion law, already among the most restrictive in the EU. "I am for life," said Miroslawa Kledzinska, 64. "God gives life, and only he has...

Legislators in South Dakota introduced a sweeping abortion bill Wednesday that would allow exceptions for rape and incest with DNA evidence, making it slightly less rigid than a bill passed last year that contained an exception only to save the life of a woman. A petition campaign forced that bill onto the ballot, and voters rejected it in November by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent. Opponents of the legislation said the issue was settled in the November election and lawmakers should not have revived it. This year's bill would allow rape victims to get abortions if they report the rapes to police within 50 days.

Dear Amy: I need your help. I am a 25-year-old single female. My father and stepmother have been married for 17 years. Recently my stepmother's cousin moved back to town after being gone for a while. I have seen him a few times and am starting to have feelings for him. He is 40. The few times that we have talked, he has made comments of having feelings for me. My question is, would people call this incest, or is it OK to ask him to go out? -- Need Help in the Midwest Dear Need Help: You and your stepmother's cousin aren't related, even by a whisker.